


Parental Guidance (One-Shot)

by MissBrainProblems



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 12:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21458074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBrainProblems/pseuds/MissBrainProblems
Summary: Prototype for a potential long-form fic. Fourteen-year-old Lisa is rescued from Coil's kidnapping attempt by Carlos passing by in civilian clothes. After coercing Lisa into telling him why she was being accosted, Carlos hauls her off to PRT HQ. Having discovered the laundry list of crimes that she's committed since coming to Brockton, the PRT presses Lisa into probationary service with the Wards; there is an attempt to contact the Livseys to inform them of the situation, but June and Frederick deny knowing their daughter at all. In response, the PRT decides that Lisa needs to be adopted by one of the local Protectorate members, both for the sake of having a parental figure present and for having a heroic role model to help show her the ropes. Colin Wallis is less than pleased to find that he's drawn the proverbial short-straw...
Comments: 4
Kudos: 68





	Parental Guidance (One-Shot)

"No. Absolutely not." Colin was sitting toward the head of the table, his helmet off and placed on the surface in front of him. "I have the responsibilities of being the leader of the Protectorate here in Brockton. I have Tinker work that I need to do. I absolutely cannot do this, by any fashion."

_ **[ Selfish. Focused on own needs and wants. Egotistical. Believes his desires come above all else. Probably wouldn't be that great of a dad, actually. ]** _

Lisa and the rest of the Brockton Bay Protectorate were arrayed at various points around the rest of the table, watching Colin intently. Ethan and Jamie, as usual, were sitting next to each other, while Shawn and Robin were at either side of Colin. Hannah was sat next to Lisa herself, squeezing the new Ward's hand in as gentle of a manner as she could; Lisa didn't actually seem too comforted by the gesture, but the young girl tried her best to show her appreciation to the older woman. "Colin. We've been over this. You're the only real option here."

"You two seem to be getting along just fine, Hannah. Why can't _you_ take her?" Colin jabbed a finger at where his second-in-command was holding Lisa's hand, a pointed look on his face.

"Colin, you're not listening." The exasperated expression on Hannah's face grew more frustrated as she repeated herself to Colin for what must have been the tenth time over the course of that meeting. "I don't sleep. I _can't_ sleep, essentially. It won't be good for Lisa to have a mother that's awake at all hours of the night and day. As much as I don't like to say this about myself, it's not _natural_, Colin. It'd be an unhealthy situation for her to be in." Hannah squeezed down on Lisa's hand, and the girl gave a small, somewhat weak smile in return.

_ **[ Genuinely cares. Honest, but not entirely truthful. Doesn't like responsibility. Hates being second-in-command. Would likely be too anxious as a mother. ]** _

The Protectorate leader began looking over the rest of the assembled heroes. "Ethan? Jamie?"

The married couple looked at each other and shook their heads in unison, before Ethan spoke up. "Colin. We're trying for a kid. Lisa seems like a great girl, don't get me wrong-" He grinned over at the teenager in question before continuing "-but it wouldn't be fair to anyone for us to be taking care of a newborn while we're also supposed to try and be parents to her, y'know?"

_ **[ Slightly selfish, but also honest. Both want to devote as much energy as they can to a potential biological child. Would make great parents, but not for an adoptive kid. ]** _

Colin frowned, growling a bit as he responded. "But doesn't that make you an even better choice? There's the opportunity for the girl-"

Hannah interrupted him before he could speak any further. "Colin. She has a name. It's Lisa. And she's here, in the room with us. Please speak in a way that keeps that in mind." The woman narrowed her eyes at her captain in a way that few people in that room had ever seen her do, and that caused a few of them to tense up slightly.

Colin huffed for a moment, crossing his arms and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Alright. If _Lisa_ went with Ethan and Jamie, then there's the opportunity for the girl to have a sibling. Isn't that good?"

Before Ethan or Jamie could respond, Hannah took the initiative once again. "No, Colin. As they said, it wouldn't be fair to either Lisa or the newborn to have to split their attention like that, especially if the two of them are going to be new parents." The married couple nodded appreciatively toward Hannah, before the woman continued. "It's why Shawn is out of the running. He has Addison to look after, and it would be too much of a burden for him to take care of Lisa at the same time." The man in question, sitting to the right of Colin, nodded silently.

_ **[ Shawn already burdened by too many other things, Addison just one of many. Wouldn't have the emotional energy necessary to look after another kid.** _ ** _Great guy, though. ]_**

The Protectorate captain narrowed his eyes in annoyance, before looking to his left, over to where the hero known as Velocity sat. "And what about Robin? Why not him?"

Hannah just smiled and shook her head. "Colin. You can't be serious."

Robin had an expression of half-shock, half-offense on his face as he looked around the room, his hands on the table pushing himself up slightly out of his chair. "H... Hey! What's that supposed to mean, huh?!"

_ **[ Lacks strength of personality. Would likely get pushed around by a child, stepped all over by his kid. Wouldn't be able to keep anyone in line, let alone someone like Lisa. ]** _

Ethan chuckled from over by where he and Jamie were sitting, biting his lip slightly before offering an answer to Robin's inquiry. "It's just, uhh... You're not exactly, y'know. You're not really 'dad' material is all, Robin."

The whole room tensed up for a moment as Robin glared at Ethan for several seconds - the latter just grinning awkwardly at his team mate in response - before the speedster just collapsed backward into his chair with a sigh. "Fine, fine. Whatever. Not 'dad' material, I guess." Robin folded his arms and pouted a little bit, looking out the window of the conference room toward the city.

Colin stared down at the desk for several seconds, before giving it one more try: "...why not Rory? He's almost eighteen, almost graduated from the Wards, so surely he can-"

_ **[ Grasping at straws. Desperate. Really, absolute does not want to have the responsibility. Hannah was right, though. The best option, out of a gamut of less than perfect ones. Selfish, but responsible. Proud, but disciplined. Egotistical, but strong and unyielding. In retrospect, might actually be a great dad, if he could actually manage to devote his energies to the kid in question. ]** _

"Colin." Hannah looked at the man with an incredulous look on her face. "He's only three years older than Lisa. Please just stop trying to get out of this. Frankly, it's embarrassing to watch you flounder about like a fish with how you are right now."

Ethan tried very, very hard not to burst out in laughter at Hannah's comment, and Jamie did her best to shush him while Colin gripped the edge of the table, glaring down at the piece of furniture as if he could light it on fire with his eyes. After several seconds, the Protectorate captain growled before giving a proper response. "Fine. But that girl-"

"_Colin_." Hannah's voice was hard as she stared back at her captain with as much ferocity as Colin himself was showing. "She is _right here_, in the room with us. And she _has a name_."

_ **[ Would be a great mom if she wasn't terrified of responsibility. Caring, selfless, more than anyone else in the room. Maybe too selfless, though. Might overextend herself as a parent. ]** _

Colin glared at Hannah for a few moments, before looking over to Lisa; the man tried to soften his expression before speaking, but failed miserably at it. "Alright. Fine. _Lisa_." The girl in question sat up straight in her chair as Colin called her name, gripping down onto Hannah's hand with nervous energy. "I..." The man grimaced a little bit, scowling as he spoke. "I will adopt you, Lisa Wilbourn. Sarah Livsey. Whatever name you want to go by."

Hannah offered helpfully, with a bit of a smirk on her face: "Lisa Wallis, maybe?"

Lisa smiled nervously, while Colin just growled again. "Lisa Wallis, maybe. I will adopt you, as I said. _However_, considering that you _are_ a former juvenile criminal, and that you _are_ a probationary member of the Wards, I _will_ be enacting _very_ strict household rules in regards to you living with me, and you _will_ continue wearing that tracking anklet for as long as I and the Protectorate see fit.." The man placed his palms on the table, using the leverage to lean toward Lisa as he continued to speak. "You _will_ listen to me, and you _will_ follow my orders. Is that understood, gi..." Colin winced, before correcting himself. "Is that understood, Lisa?"

_ **[ Responsible. Disciplined. Strong. Unyielding. Hopefully he could manage to actually throw some kindness and generosity in there, though. ]** _

The girl in question looked anxiously toward Hannah, who nodded with reassurance toward Lisa. With nervousness in her voice, Lisa cleared her throat and spoke up. "Yes, sir. I understand, sir." The girl knew that she shouldn't test her luck, not with the atmosphere as tense as it was, but she couldn't help herself, not with the personality she was cursed with. "I mean..." A fox-like smirk spread itself across Lisa's face. "Yes, dad. I understand, dad."

Ethan couldn't contain himself any further, and erupted into giggles; Jamie desperately tried to quiet her husband down even as she herself began to laugh a little bit. Shawn and Robin were both snickering a bit as they turned away from Colin, while Hannah was smiling toward Lisa. The man of the hour himself just gave a hard frown, directed at the entire room of Protectorate members and the girl who would soon become his adoptive daughter. "We'll also see if we can't work on that attitude of yours."

Lisa didn't let up on the smile, though, even as Hannah began to speak up again. "Alright. The two of you don't need to worry about any of the paperwork, I'll get all of that done for you." The woman turned to Lisa, before continuing. "Just to make sure, dear, you want 'Lisa Wallis' as your legal civilian name and 'Tattletale' as your name for the Wards, correct?"

As Colin continued to stare down at Lisa, the girl simply returned new father's expression with a mischievous look on her face. "Yeah. That's my name, now. Lisa Wallis."

<s>\----------</s>

_ **[ Sparse. Dusty, but also spotless. Colin seems a bit uncertain about where some things are. He owns the house, but doesn't actually live in it. Spends most of his time at Protectorate HQ, working on Tinkertech, or on patrol. Married to his work; rather, one might say that his work is - or was - his kid. ]** _

Colin flipped a light switch, illuminating the barren second-floor bedroom that he and Lisa were then standing in, the place completely devoid of even a single piece of furniture. "This will be your room. It's right next to mine, so I can hear if you try to escape, or anything like that."

Lisa smiled at her dad - she was still trying to get used to that appellation - in the way that Colin had quickly learned to be suspicious of. "Now why would I try to do something like that, father dearest?"

The man clenched and squeezed his fists, trying to do his best to remain calm toward his daughter - same as Lisa, there would still be some time before Colin figured that he'd feel comfortable calling her that - even as she teased and needled him. "Because you're a former criminal, Lisa Wallis. You probably don't like being here with me any more than I like taking care of you, so of course you'd try to escape if you felt that you had the chance."

Colin felt an odd emotion flash through him as he saw Lisa's face turn into an honest-to-god frown, the girl clenching her jaw and facing away from the man. "If you don't like taking care of me, then why don't you just ship me off back to June and Frederick?" Lisa was... Hurt? Genuinely upset? That was the first time that Colin had ever seen those sort of emotions out of her, and in turn he felt...

"Sorry." God, he genuinely felt guilty, seeing her... Seeing his daughter make that face. "I shouldn't have said that. I apologize, Lisa." That sort of stuff was why he really didn't want to take on the responsibility of looking after the girl, though. Hannah was good with kids. Shawn had experience with one. Ethan and Jamie could have given her two parental figures. Robin... Well, at least Robin was a nice guy, if nothing else. The only response he got out of Lisa after his apology, though, was just an angry glance from the girl, before she went back to staring at one of the empty, white walls of her new bedroom. Clearing his throat with a cough, Colin continued. "Anyways. There's no bed here right now, obviously, but I have a blow-up mattress here somewhere. I recognize that sleeping on something like that for prolonged periods won't be good for either school or Wards work, so we can go purchase a regular bed for you at some point."

Lisa turned toward the empty closest, pointing at it as she spoke. "We also need to go shopping for clothes." Colin took a moment to be thankful that Lisa was speaking - for a moment, he was worried that he had infuriated her enough that she'd never talk to him again - before he gave the girl a confused look. Lisa, in return, balked at him with an incredulous expression, before talking as if she was speaking to a child; after all, Colin may as well have been an infant in matters of fashion. Motioning to herself, she said: "Colin. Dad." Yeah, still weird for her to say, still weird for him to say. "These are the only clothes I own right now. I have exactly _one_ outfit, _one_ shirt,_ one_ pair of jeans, _one_ pair of socks, _one_ bra, _one_ pair of panties. You're not going to make your daughter dress in the same underwear every single day, are you?"

Colin managed to simultaneously blush and scowl at once, as he turned away from Lisa to look at the closet that she had pointed at. "No. I suppose that I won't do that." He managed to compose himself enough to look toward his adoptive daughter again, his face hard as he jabbed a finger in her direction. "But I will remind you that the reason that you don't have anything other than the proverbial shirt on your back is because everything else that you supposedly 'owned' was stolen from businesses in Brockton Bay, which we thus had to confiscate from you." Lisa just sort of shrugged as Colin reminded his daughter of the serial thievery that she had committed prior to Carlos finding her; the man's eyebrows furrowed as he crossed his arms and spoke authoritatively. "So we will be shopping at thrift stores, I will pick out your clothes, we will be using your allowance from the Wards, and you will like whatever it is that we end up buying for you." Colin had intended for the verbal barrage to unsettle Lisa in some way, intended for it to make the teenage girl cry, whine, to stomp off and scream about how unfair he was being, or make her perform any of the stereotypical behaviors that he understood spoiled, entitled brats like Lisa engaged in. His daughter, though, simply stood there, with her arms crossed, giving him that _smirk_ of hers.

_**[ Has absolutely no idea just how much of an expert Lisa is at scrounging through thrift stores. Will more than likely regret his cockiness the moment that the two of them walk into the place. Confident, self-assured, and bold in regard to cape and Protectorate business, but has no idea how to handle a teenage girl once she has been unleashed into a clothing shop.**_ _**Will fold quicker than a stack of cards once she begins in earnest. ]**_

With a cheery, sing-song voice, Lisa responded as obediently as she can manage. "Yes, dad. I understand, dad. I'm sure that I'll _love_ whatever you pick out for me, don't worry."

Colin squinted his eyes at Lisa, trying to get a gauge of what sort of game the girl was playing. Stuff like that was why the man hated Thinkers; he could never tell what was going on inside of their heads, could never figure out their plans, or anything else about them. It appeared that his new daughter, unfortunately, would be much of the same. With a grumble, he turned to exit from Lisa's bedroom. "I'll go get the mattress. Stay..." Colin stopped, and actually bothered to consider his words before speaking again. "You can walk around the house if you like. There's not much, though. Don't go into the other bedrooms, either. One's mine, the other's a workshop. And don't leave the house, either. I'll consider that an escape attempt if you do."

Lisa smiled and nodded, the expression on her face at least marginally less devilish than it had been the last time she spoke. "Alright, alright. Stay inside the house, got it." As Colin made his way downstairs to dig out the air mattress from storage, he turned around to take another look at Lisa; the blonde girl was humming as she held her hands behind her back, kicking her feet as she walked around casually, looking around the upper floor of his house... Her house, at that point, too. The man frowned, as he watched his adoptive daughter, because even when she wasn't giving him that impish grin of hers, he couldn't decipher her expression; Colin wasn't the best at understanding people even in the most ideal of circumstances, so as he watched the complex emotions cross the girl's face, he found himself completely unable to make heads or tails of all of it. Was she happy that he had adopted her? Was she sad? Was she still upset from earlier? Did she want to escape? Did she want to stay? Did she like him? Did she hate him?

With a sigh, Colin shook those thoughts out of his head, dismissing them as useless and completely pointless to consider. He would do whatever he felt was best for the rest of Lisa's upbringing, for her schooling, for her work with the Wards. That was all that he could do, and that was all that he needed to do. Trying to figure out what the girl was thinking or feeling didn't matter, not to Colin, because he was the type of man that would make the same decisions regardless of how she felt about them.

As he scrounged around in storage for the blow-up bed, though, Colin just hoped that he'd be able to make the _correct_ decisions, for both his sake and for Lisa's.

<s>\----------</s>

Colin woke up the next morning to the smell of breakfast being cooked. For a moment, the man panicked, because the only reason that his kitchen could have possibly been being used - in his mind, anyway - was because there was an intruder in his house. Why hadn't his security gone off? Every entrance to his house was secured with Tinkertech of his own design, and there were sensors and detectors galore scattered throughout the interior. It didn't matter, though; Colin rolled out of bed and grabbed one of the weapons he had stored in a nightstand just for this sort of eventuality, and-

...and remembered that Lisa was living with him. He hadn't pegged Lisa as the type of girl to make a home-cooked breakfast, but maybe he had been wrong. Just on the off-chance that it _wasn't_ Lisa downstairs in his kitchen, though, he brought the stun pistol with him as he walked down the stairs, his eyes wary for the possibility of some enemy intruder lurking on the first floor of his house. As he turned the corner, though, he let out a sigh of relief as he saw that it was indeed his daughter, standing in front of the oven, in the same clothes she had been wearing last night; they really did need to go shopping before that day was over, it seemed.

Lisa turned toward Colin as if to wish him a good morning, but she stopped when she saw the Tinkergun held in his right hand. With a raised eyebrow and a slight smirk, she asked him: "Really? Is it now a crime for me to make breakfast for my dad? Am I, uhh, gonna get dragged to the PRT holding cells for it?"

Colin frowned as he lifted up the stun pistol to take a look at it; he supposed that it was rather rude to greet someone first thing in the morning while holding a weapon. With a sigh, he placed the Tinkergun on one of the kitchen counters, before taking a seat at the dining table. "No. It's not. I apologize. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't an intruder, is all. I'm not used to there being other people in my house."

The scent of perfectly prepared bacon filled his nose as Lisa placed a few servings worth onto a plate. "Yeah. That's obvious from the dearth of food in your fridge."

Colin winced, not even remembering the last time that he had used the refrigerator, himself. "Was, uhm. That wasn't expired, was it?" The man stood up out of the dining table and walked over to where the strips of bacon were sitting, still steaming hot.

As one of her father's hands reached out to grab a piece of the meat, Lisa slapped it away with an exaggeratedly annoyed look on her face. "Nuh-uh-uh. Wait until everything's done, dad." Colin frowned, again, not only because the girl whose father he was supposed to be had smacked at him - a girl who, Colin remembered, was a former criminal, striking him, a member of the Protectorate - but also because of the still unfamiliar sound of the word 'dad' in his ears; he idly wondered if Lisa was calling him that just to watch him squirm whenever she did. "And no, the bacon was fine. It tends to not go bad for a long time." The girl turned to look at him, giving the man a judging look as she continued to speak. "As for the rest of the shit in your fridge, though? Yeah, I had to toss most of it." She used one hand to open up one of the doors beneath the sink, revealing a trash can full of various molded-over products.

Colin felt himself speak automatically. "Hey. Don't swear." Wait, where had that come from? He actually had not a single clue what prompted that out of him. He knew that parents were normally expected to chastise their children for cursing, so had it been some sort of instinctive or reflexive action based in that knowledge?

Lisa snorted, as she cracked an egg into the frying pan, next. "Yes, dad. I won't swear, dad. Whatever you say, dad." Okay, yes, Colin could _definitely_ tell that she was deliberately using that title for the express purpose of getting a reaction out of him; it annoyed him, on several levels, including a few that he couldn't quite have explained if somebody had asked him to. "Anyway, the eggs technically expired a few days ago, but they're still edible, so..." She flipped open the egg carton to reveal that there was a whole eleven left, a dozen including the one she had just started to cook; with a wide grin, Lisa looked at her adoptive father and raised an eyebrow. "I sure hope you like eggs."

Colin wasn't sure what to say to that - he could barely keep up in conversation with the girl at all, in reality - so he simply grunted before returning to the dining table, staying in his seat that time. After a few more minutes of cooking, a plate piled to the brim with scrambled eggs adorned by a few, scarce pieces of bacon was placed in front of him by Lisa; he stared at the meal for several seconds, before speaking up. "...did I not have any ketchup?"

As she took a seat across from him, his adoptive daughter just sort of smiled and shook her head. "No. No you didn't. Now stop complaining and eat what I've put in front of you, young man."

Colin growled, not honoring Lisa's needling of him with a proper response. Instead, the man opted to simply take his fork and start digging into the rather unbalanced meal, spearing a piece of still mildly hot scrambled egg and popping it into his mouth. It was bland, to say the least, with no seasoning to speak of and lacking anything resembling flavor; and yet, at the same time, Colin felt like he hadn't had eggs that tasted as good as those in a long, long time.

<s>\----------</s>

"...I concretely recall telling you that _I_ would be doing the shopping, Lisa." Colin, the poor man, had found himself at that moment lugging around several bags of clothes; for a while, he had been being forced to simply carry the items themselves, but he eventually managed to convince Lisa to drop some of them off at the cashier to get them purchased and placed into carriable containers.

The girl in question simply turned toward her adoptive father, as she held a pink, frilly blouse for examination. "I mean, you can take control any time you like, dad. Just say the word, and I'll stop picking out items." Colin glared at Lisa with every ounce of rancor he could muster toward the girl. He had realized, at some point, that her nagging tendency to keep calling him 'dad' was a method of ingratiating herself to him, a way for her to convince him to do certain things, or to convince him to let _her_ do certain things; those certain things included, of course, finding two hundred odd dollars worth of thrift store clothing to buy for her closet. When the man found himself incapable of offering any meaningful answer beyond one of his characteristic grumbles, Lisa just smiled, patted him on the cheek, and teased: "Thought so. Anyways, how does this look?"

Colin just shook his head in annoyance and confusion both. "What? I don't know. It looks fine to me. Why are you spending so much time on this kind of stuff, anyway?" He idly wondered if saying things like that made him some sort of stereotypical "dude", or whatever, the kind of guy that didn't understand fashion, or didn't get why women and girls spent so much time and energy on clothing; at the same time, though, he hoped that it was just because he was Collin Wallis, because he was Armsmaster, the Protectorate member that most people agreed had difficulty understanding other people, and that he wasn't just an example of some comedic male stereotype.

Unfortunately, Lisa immediately dashed her adoptive father's hopes of not being just another mindless member of the proverbial herd; after staring at him for several seconds with a blank look on her face, she flatly said: "Wow, dad. You really are just a typical guy, aren't you?" Colin veritably felt his face drop in despondency at her words; so he _was_ a dumb stereotype, then? While Colin was busy lamenting the fact that he was, apparently, some sort of stupid lemming, Lisa threw the blouse back into the clothes rack, before beginning her march down the aisle again; as she stopped to examine another article of clothing, she looked toward where Colin was still standing, the bags of clothes in his arms, staring down at the carpeted floor of the thrift shop. "Dad?" The girl called out to her adoptive father, prompting Colin to look up toward her. "You okay?"

Colin looked at his daughter for a few long moments, his mind rapidly trying to process a variety of things at once; unable to leave Lisa hanging for an answer any longer than necessary, though, he responded with a simple: "Yeah. I'm fine. Sorry, I'm coming." As he walked toward her again, he allowed his brain to go back to thinking through all of the stuff flooding his thoughts. When Lisa pulled out a long-sleeved flannel shirt and held it up to her, Colin decided to try answering her, without being prompted. "Hey, Lisa." The girl in question turned to look at him, a curious look on her face. "That looks good on you. The shirt, I mean. I, uhh. I don't know why it does. Just looks good. Yeah."

For a moment, Lisa's expression was one of pure shock; in the next second, though, a wide, genuine smile devoid of even an ounce of her usual mischief spread across the girl's face. "It does? Thanks. I... I can buy it, then?" Lisa sported a hopeful grin as she spoke, motioning the flannel shirt toward Colin in the process.

In spite of everything else, Colin felt himself smile a little bit as he nodded. "Yeah. We can buy it, yeah." When he realized the expression he had on his face, though, Colin forced it back into a scowl, furrowing his eyebrows and speaking pointedly. "So long as it's not too expensive. We don't have much of a budget left, you know."

Lisa's smirk barely faltered as she went to go check the price tag. "Yeah, yeah, I hear you, dad. And it's cheap, so we're getting it." With a playful huff and upturned nose, Lisa stuck out a tongue toward Colin as she tucked the shirt under one of her arms; the man himself wracked his brain trying to figure out a proper response to the girl, but nothing in his mind managed to turn up an appropriate answer.

<s>\----------</s>

A short while later, the two of them were loading themselves into Colin's car, a simple little four-door thing that had less than ten thousand miles on it due to chronic under-use. As Lisa climbed into the passenger seat and buckled herself up, Colin noticed the girl fidgeting and shifting around next to him; as oblivious as the man might have been when it came to other people, he could tell that there was something up with the girl. "Lisa? What's wrong? Do you need to use the bathroom? I think they had a public one inside. We can go back in."

Lisa scowled at Colin hard enough that he momentarily thought that he might be looking in a mirror; after several seconds of glaring at him, the girl let out a heavy sigh and shook her head. "No. It's not that, Colin. I mean, it's..."

The man had no idea what was happening. What could have possibly happened to unsettle that vexatious little girl so much? An enemy, perhaps? A threat? "Lisa. Speak up. Are we in danger? Is there someone nearby? A criminal? A villain?"

The girl looked at him like he was an idiot, like he was a complete, unmitigated moron who wouldn't know how to put his pants on in the morning if he had to try. "No. No, that's not it at all, just... Argh!" Lisa started ruffling her hair furiously, giving a growl of annoyance as she did so.

Colin began to panic. What was wrong with her? She had been placed into his care just last night, and now something was horribly, tragically wrong with Lisa. Was she dying? Was she having a medical emergency? "Lisa? Please, talk to me. Are you okay? Are you having a heart attack? A stroke? There's a hospital nearby, we can-"

"No!" The girl shouted at him, an expression of complete disbelief on her face. "God damnit, just... Be quiet for a moment, okay? Like, just shut up. Please." Colin was taken aback for a moment, both by the girl's rudeness - if he wasn't so concerned about her, he'd have probably started yelling at her for telling him to shut up - but also by how increasing disheveled she was becoming with every second. He watched cautiously, monitoring her for any issue that he could try and discover, while Lisa took several deep breaths, in and out. After a while, the girl nodded, and looked directly into his eyes. "Alright. Dad?" He matched her gaze, giving a nod of acknowledgment. "Thank you." The bewilderment that Colin felt must have shown itself on his face, because Lisa scowled and repeated her words. "_Thank you_, dad. For taking me shopping. I haven't gone properly shopping for a while; stealing doesn't count, obviously. And it's been even longer since I went shopping with someone else, or went shopping with like... A parent, or whatever. So like..." His daughter grit her teeth as she looked away, a blush spreading rapidly on her cheeks. "Seriously. Thank you. This was nice." Colin stared at her for what must have been a full minute, the man having even less of an idea of how to respond to all of that than on anything else he had considered since he had met the girl. Seeing her father's confusion, Lisa Wallis pinched the bridge of her nose, and sighed out every atom of oxygen in her lungs from frustration. "Dad. This is the part where you say 'You're welcome.' or 'No problem.' or even just 'Sure.' Really, just say anything so that I'm not sitting here looking like an idiot, please?"

Colin cleared his throat, gulped, and nodded. "Yeah. Uhm. You're welcome, Lisa." He still didn't know what to say, what to think, what to do, or what expression to show on his face, to either what Lisa had just told him or to anything else she had done and said over the past twenty four hours; he supposed, though, that a simple 'You're welcome.' was a good start to things.

"So, uhh." Lisa smiled, a red flush still on her face as she pointed her finger at where Colin's hand was; the car keys were still held between his fingers, stuck in the ignition, but the vehicle not having been turned on yet by that point. "Are we, uhh, gonna go? Or did you forget something inside?"

Colin looked toward Lisa, frowning at the tease she had directed at him, but started up his car either way. "No. We're going now."

As the engine started up, Lisa leaned back toward the passenger door, resting her head in her hand as she grinned toward her adoptive father. "Where are we going, though?" Colin glanced at her while he started to drive out of the thrift store's parking lot, making his confusion clear. "Look, dad. Just humor me. Tell me where we're going."

The man shook his head, feeling his exasperation rise as he continued to try and continued to fail at understanding the girl that he was now parentally responsible for. "We're going home, Lisa. Where else would we be going?"

That seemed to have been the answer that his daughter had been looking for, as another one of those happy, guileless expressions appeared on her face; while taking an idle glance out of the car's window, she responded to Colin's question with a soft, faint voice. "Nowhere else, I suppose." Turning to look at her father, she quietly repeated her words, accompanying them with a simple, contented smile: "Nowhere else."


End file.
